Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan has appealed to workers and employees who have started wage negotiations to consider the economy in the decisions they will make.

Wage negotiations have begun in several sectors including mining and manufacturing.

“We need to keep as stable a labour environment as we can‚ recognising the pressure that our economy is under‚ and we need to find creative and constructive solutions that’ll enable us to survive this trough and make sure that the efforts that we are making to grow the economy and create jobs begin to take root and produce results in the next six to nine months‚” Gordhan said on the sidelines of an illicit financial flows conference at the University of Pretoria.

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The Minister told the conference that tougher measures need to be taken against those who rob the fiscus through illicit financial flows.

One of the challenges was that there were too few convictions of those who engaged in illicit financial flows‚ Gordhan said.

“A lot of emphasis must be placed on effective enforcement systems and the political will to enforce these laws‚” he said.

Some organisations estimate Africa loses $50 billion a year to illicit financial flows such as money laundering and tax avoidance by individuals and multinational companies.

“No matter how well drafted and well intended our laws are‚ it is utterly useless if we do not have the capacity or will to enforce that law‚” Gordhan said.

“Multinational companies cannot extract money from all of our countries … and have them stashed somewhere to the tune of trillions of dollars … without paying the necessary tax‚ which would generate the right kind of fiscal capability in each of our countries.”

- TMG Digital/BDLive